A Halo...Arcade Game? 343 Explains the Origin of Halo: Fireteam Raven

In the long wait for another entry in the Halo-verse, no one would have guessed the next chance to share the screen with Master Chief would come in the form a mammoth arcade game. The announcement of Halo: Fireteam Raven – a joint effort between 343 Industries and arcade developers Raw Thrills and Play Mechanix – seemingly came out of nowhere.

In the few short months since that announcement, Halo: Fireteam Raven is already out in the wilds of Dave and Busters across the country, waiting for you and up to three others to gun down droves of Covenant and Flood as a the titular ODST foursome during the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. We’ve already played it, and as our Halo: Fireteam Raven Review states, it’s good! But the question remains, why a Halo arcade game?

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To find out how this massive, cooperative shooting gallery came into being, we spoke with Kiki Wolfkill, head of Halo transmedia at 343 Industries, and Eugene Jarvis, CEO of Raw Thrills.

“Raw Thrills had approached us many years ago with the idea of a Halo arcade game,” Wolfkill said. “At the time we were heads-down on Halo 4 but were genuinely intrigued with the idea, we just wanted to make sure that we had the time to properly dedicate to the partnership.”

“We all have incredibly fond memories of our own arcade game experiences and of course, the idea of working with the legendary Eugene Jarvis was a dream come true so it really was just a matter of when! We had been looking for opportunities for an out-of-home, social Halo experience and Raw Thrills was the right team to help us do that.”

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For Eugene Jarvis’ part, his partners and team of developers were already keen Halo fans, and the road from pitching a Halo arcade game to finally seeing it up and running was a long one that had its share of obstacles to overcome.

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There was so much in this puppy that we overshot by over a year and millions [of dollars] extra on our budget."

“At Raw Thrills we have been Halo freaks since the first Xbox,” Jarvis said. “The entire dev team at our Play Mechanix studio has been obsessed with doing a Halo arcade game ever since. What we needed was a killer arcade concept that would completely blow away the developers at 343 Industries and be worthy of carrying the Halo torch. Easier said than done.

“We needed to bring something cool and unique that would have the “Wow!” factor to get people totally psyched and off their butts and into the arcade. One of the coolest things about Halo is the player community is built around awesome networked team experiences. The arcade is really about Live meatspace gaming – and 343 really insisted we get the team concept right. So we decided to go big with a 4-player co-op sim.

"After a decade of failed designs and crash and burn pitches we had something that the folks at 343 Industries couldn’t pass up.

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“Working with Microsoft and 343 was unlike any development we’ve ever experienced. The care, passion, and attention to detail at 343 was never ending, and sometimes exhausting, but I think it really shows in the game. It’s been 3+ years since we got the green light for the game.

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"343 Industries takes Halo very seriously!"

“Being our first Halo experience, our first ever 4-player co-op game, it sucked down a lot more resources than we guessed. There was so much in this puppy that we overshot by over a year and millions [of dollars] extra on our budget. For eons it seemed we were pouring assets and content down a black hole – but when we finally got everything into the game running on the prototype it was jaw dropping.”

“As a dev studio you have to have to have a team with real passion for the experience. If there is no love, just a quest for cash, then nothing good is going to happen. With 343 Industries it was truly a joint project from day one. They opened up their asset stash and gave us incredible art, animations, concepts, style guides, etc. We even linked up the arcade game with Halo Xbox Live player accounts. They were so crazy they wrote an entirely new chapter in the Halo lore just for Fireteam Raven; so we seamlessly fit in the Halo universe. The whole concept of being on the Ring with the ODST’s was beyond cool! But it was all for the best. 343 Industries takes their Halo very seriously!”

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For Kiki Wolfkill and the folks at 343, Halo: Fireteam Raven was also a learning experience. Though the arcade space the PC/console space are distant cousins in the same entertainment family, there are very real considerations when designing for a game in one realm versus the other. Not to mention how you translate the core pillars of Halo into an arcade experience worthy of the nearly 17-year-old series.

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After a decade of failed designs and crash and burn pitches we had something that the folks at 343 Industries couldn’t pass up.

“What was important to us was that the experience be both true to what an arcade game should be (fast-paced, approachable, sensory to the extreme) and true to what Halo is (visceral, infectiously fun, story-based, competitive),” Wolfkill said. “We wanted it to be the best modern arcade game out there while also being a rollicking Halo adventure and a way for different types of people to enter our universe who may not be console players.

“It was incredible to learn from Raw Thrills through this partnership what is important for an arcade game versus what we focus on in console and PC gaming. There is an immediacy to an arcade game – fun, gratification, the story hook, a sense of visceral reward, all of these things need to happen quickly and in a kind of shorthand with intense forward momentum. We didn’t have the luxury of easing into the story so we approached this by taking fan favorite moments from Halo: Combat Evolved and from other stories in the Halo: CE timeframe and shifted the angle on them so you play them from the ODST perspective (Fireteam Raven).

Halo: Fireteam Raven Screenshot Gallery

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A screenshot from a Halo: Fireteam Raven prototype cabinet.

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A screenshot from a Halo: Fireteam Raven prototype cabinet.

Halo: Fireteam Raven Screenshot Gallery

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“The team who worked on this have worked across many Halo games in the past and of course our own Frank O’Connor provided invaluable feedback along the way. This had to feel like a Halo game in its most distilled and authentic form. For Halo players there is familiarity, for new players, there are huge, bombastic moments and a chance to see the Master Chief in action (so in some ways you’re seeing your previous player self).

“Adding the connectivity to your Xbox Live gamertag and your Halo Waypoint Spartan profile brings both our gaming worlds together for the player so we felt like we were able to deliver something new. For us, success is an authentic and viscerally fun Halo experience different from what you can get in your living room and I think we were able to deliver on that.”